H1

Villain (CO): 30 ish white guy, wearing shades and recently somehow raised preflop and bet flop/bet turn/called a river donk shove, got shown top pair no kicker and mucked ($300)

Hero (BTN): late 20s Asian guy, just sat an orbit ago, raised preflop once and check/folded flop ($300)

MP opens $12. Villain calls in CO. Hero calls on BTN with 88. SB calls.

Flop: QQ5 ($44)

MP checks. Villain bets $20. Only hero calls.

Turn: 7 ($84)

Villain checks. Hero ???

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H2 (different table)

Villain (MP): MAWG, just sat ($200)
Hero (BTN): late 20s Asian guy, no image to villain (covers)

Villain limps in MP. Hero makes it $15 on the BTN with A9. BB and villain call.

Flop: Q87 ($40)

Checked around.

Turn: 2 ($40)

BB checks. Villain says "let's match the preflop raise" and bets $15. Hero ???

I'd bet $20-$25 in H1 for value and equity denial against overcards. H2 I prefer a flop c-bet with double-backdoors. As played raise turn to $60 and plan on jamming most rivers.

hand 1 bet, our hand is too vulnerable to check

hand 2, fold pre. as played i would call.

First hand I'm definitely betting. People are just so unbalanced and weak when they bet flop and check turn. In terms of sizing, I think vs the PFR I can go small cause he's more polarized. The caller probably has more middling hands, many of which beat me. So I opted to go with a larger sizing to not only fold out overcards but to put 99-JJ in a tough spot OOP. If I had a stronger OP like TT I would probably size down just for equity denial. Unbalanced of course, but no one's paying attention.

Second hand I definitely cbet heads up. Multiway I feel like it's way too connected to get through. Turn is weird cause of the sizing. I would call, but the sizing seems like a hand he doesn't want to stack off with. I made a mistake though and made it too small. By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late to size a proper river shove.

H1

Villain (CO): 30 ish white guy, wearing shades and recently somehow raised preflop and bet flop/bet turn/called a river donk shove, got shown top pair no kicker and mucked ($300)

Hero (BTN): late 20s Asian guy, just sat an orbit ago, raised preflop once and check/folded flop ($300)

MP opens $12. Villain calls in CO. Hero calls on BTN with 88. SB calls.

Flop: QQ5 ($44)

MP checks. Villain bets $20. Only hero calls.

Turn: 7 ($84)

Villain checks. Hero bets $55. Villain calls.

River: K ($194)

Villain says "check". Hero ???

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H2 (different table)

Villain (MP): MAWG, just sat ($200)
Hero (BTN): late 20s Asian guy, no image to villain (covers)

Villain limps in MP. Hero makes it $15 on the BTN with A9. BB and villain call.

Flop: Q87 ($40)

Checked around.

Turn: 2 ($40)

BB checks. Villain says "let's match the preflop raise" and bets $15. Hero makes it $45. Villain calls.

River: 3 ($129)

Villain checks blind. Hero ???

Grunch

Hand 1: check turn. Way ahead/way behind. I don't think we're getting value from anything worse and we have enough sdv to try to get their the river. I'm calling all modest sized river leads except A as this looks like A5 or a pocket pair. Our hand looks like a pocket pair as well unfortunately. If he bets big on river we can think about better hands to defend with, preferably something we flat pre that has sdv and blocks Qx. A bigger spade in our hand would be nicer if river spade comes but whatever.

Hand 2: I'm conflicted about flop. You have a decent barreling hand but it probably hits their range better than yours. Turn just call. You're getting good odds to call. His bet and speech play make it seem like he's putting you on AK or AJ, some sort of unimproved big cards that he wants to put pressure on but he doesn't have much hands himself so you could raise but I don't think you be repping anything so I prefer a call.

Re others' thoughts on H1 turn, no need to protect we're either behind or he is live to 2-3 outs. There's no draws on the flop and he bet into two players not last to act.

Re hand 2, like I said postflop I'm good with multiple options as long as fold is not one. Pre this is marginal but we have position and limp-call 5x = bad player so I'm sure we can make this work. Oh and our line looks so fos.

Both these rivers worse does not call a big bet because we've put ourselves in a tough spot by forcing villains' range to narrow down to his stronger holdings. So can we bluff profitably?

H1 I think we can get better to fold because he just called a turn bet rather than bet/called and the K of flush making is scary enough.

H2 this is the brick of the century and he called a turn raise, time to roll over as he has every reason to call.

Btw OP thanks for posting these hands. The constant flood of "AA/KK facing a raise!" threads gets old.

H1 I don't like your reasoning for a large size. You're wasting your SDV by turning 88 into a bluff if your plan is to pressure JJ-99, which is a pretty narrow range to target anyway and I would not expect those hands to fold to a single non-overbet. You can definitely still get value with a smaller sizing and frequently win at showdown.

On the river you're still targeting a very narrow range. Qx is very unlikely to fold. You mostly just fold worse. Take your showdown.

H2 shove river. It doesn't matter if we're repping thin. It's not like we take this line often as a bluff. Give-up with non-nut hearts you chose to raise on the turn, especially if you have showdown value.

Almost forgot to post results.

H1 I'm targetting specifically 99-JJ as I don't think he has Qx+ cause he probably just bets them.

H2 meh. I feel like it's close. My sizing was definitely bad though. I just don't think he's strong but once he calls it's probably Qx that won't fold.

I've actually been posting hands that are very specific and never come up so not so important. These hands I feel like are very important because H1 is about taking showdown value or equity denial/denying villain the chance to bluff river and on the river just straight up bluffing. And it's a spot that comes up quite a bit. H2 also comes up quite a bit.

H1 I'm not trying to get value. I know that if I get called I'm toast. It's more about denying villain equity/the chance to bluff me off on the river. When he calls I either have to bluff the river or give up.

H2 like I said it's close. Once I raise turn to less than $60 I feel like shoving is just risking too much to win less and doesn't necessarily generate more fold equity. The main problem is I don't rep much. If this was heads up I easily triple barrel and the river is probably a shove given starting stacks.

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RESULTS
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H1

Villain (CO): 30 ish white guy, wearing shades and recently somehow raised preflop and bet flop/bet turn/called a river donk shove, got shown top pair no kicker and mucked ($300)

Hero (BTN): late 20s Asian guy, just sat an orbit ago, raised preflop once and check/folded flop ($300)

MP opens $12. Villain calls in CO. Hero calls on BTN with 88. SB calls.

Flop: QQ5 ($44)

MP checks. Villain bets $20. Only hero calls.

Turn: 7 ($84)

Villain checks. Hero bets $55. Villain calls.

River: K ($194)

Villain says "check". Hero bets $110. Villain folds.

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H2 (different table)

Villain (MP): MAWG, just sat ($200)
Hero (BTN): late 20s Asian guy, no image to villain (covers)

Villain limps in MP. Hero makes it $15 on the BTN with A9. BB and villain call.

Flop: Q87 ($40)

Checked around.

Turn: 2 ($40)

BB checks. Villain says "let's match the preflop raise" and bets $15. Hero makes it $45. Villain calls.

River: 3 ($129)

Villain checks blind. Hero bets $80. Villain snap calls and shows AQ no heart.

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H1 not surprised. Even a hand like QT isn't gonna be thrilled with that action. And might even fold. The most important part of this hand was the turn though. I think the old school way is to take showdown value. But I feel like when people have unbalanced and weak turn checking ranges, you can just get away with more bluffing/equity denial.

H2 quite surprised. I thought the very top of his range was KQ. Maybe I could raise a scarier heart like one that fills some straights/two pairs, not the brick of all hearts. So in this case (trying not to be results oriented), flat turn, bomb or bluff raise a scary river and give up on a brick like this one is probably the correct play.

H1:

I'm cool with preflop/flop.

I mostly check back the turn to help induce bluffs / one more payoff from weak hands / prevent lottsa money from going in when actually behind. Would be more cool with a bet here had the flop contained a draw (but this flop was bone dry so very unlikely he's picked up one on the turn).

ETA: Your thinking seems to suggest you think our turn bet is partways a bluff? I'm not considering that at all, especially since it's such a very small range we're targetting (especially given the bigger part of this very small range may sometimes 3bet preflop). I'm more looking for just one more bet to go into the pot, so if we put that in on the turn, I'm cool with checking back the river (especially this one where it is now just that much harder to get value from anything worse).


H2:

Since moving to my Super Nit method and now sitting on a 66bb stack instead of a 100bb stack, I've really toned down my LP preflop aggression with weak hands, due to the fact that we'll often get ourselves into really stoopid super small SPR commitment spots (especially thanks to big raises still going multiway). I'd actually lean mostly to folding here, and otherwise I'm ok with an overlimp to simply play postflop poker in position in a skyhigh SPR pot, or even a very small raise to attempt to isolate while creating a more manageable SPR. I'm not convinced the bigger raise works out here great long term; yes, we'll steal a lotta pots preflop, as well as when we cbet and take it down; but the times our cbet gets called might obliterate all this, especially when we get into awkward and uncomfortable commitment spots when we actually make our often dominated TP. Anyways, it's just something I've become more aware of since playing a lot shorter.

I also give up on the flop.

I call the turn. We're almost getting the immediate odds we need and hopefully we'll get paid off a little bit thanks to being in position (although obviously our IO are hurting on a 4-to-a-flush board), and meanwhile play poker when hitting an Ace.

ETA: I check back the river. We do have showdown value against almost every other busted draw and meanwhile a bet probably gets looked up a lot as our line makes no sense for value (which is why I'd be fine with this line had we flopped TP). ETA#2: I missed that we raised turn (which I wouldn't have done); yeah, probably forced ourselves into a river shove at this point as played (which I'm not a fan of). This is another reason I really dislike preflop now; we make our passive opponents with TP hands like AQ now play perfectly because we setup the small committing SPR for them, and then they mostly correctly don't fold.


ETA#3: My opinions would be (1) your turning a showdownable hand into a needless bluff in HH1 and (2) you're doing your opponents job for them by setting up committing SPRs for their TP hands in HH2 at this stack size.

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